Squats and lunges will never not be part of leg day, but if you need a fresh way to work your lower-body, its time for us to introduce you to something that challenges your muscles and your mindset in equal measureyoga for legs.

Yoga might not be the first thing that comes to mind for challenging leg workouts, but trust us, its a game-changer. The practice doesnt just build physical strength, but mental strength as well, says Paige Willis, RYT-200, certified yoga instructor and founder of Undone, a pop-up yoga experience.

While its different from your typical leg day, building strength in yoga requires you to engage multiple muscle groups at a time and move with a wide range of motion, she says. Think of standing poses like chair pose and crescent lunge, where you have to engage the muscles in your lower body to find stability. If you hold these poses for several rounds of breath, you invite endurance into the equation, along with strength.

For April 2024, weve asked her to host our Movement of the Month Club, focusing on yoga. And in Week 2, were focusing on lower-body yoga poses. Below, Willis demonstrates six poses that not only strengthen key lower-body muscles (glutes, quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves) but also improve your stability in ways that traditional workouts might miss.

If youre following along with our Movement of the Month Club, youll do one pose each day, Monday through Saturday. Then on Sunday, youll combine all the asanas together into a full 5-minute flow.

Do each pose for 50 seconds (25 seconds on each side, where necessary) before moving on to the next one, for a total of 5 minutes. If youre feeling especially tight or if you have more time, feel free to do each move for as long as feels good.

This pose strengthens your lower body (particularly your quadriceps and glutes) and challenges your balance, stability, and focus, while helping improve knee and ankle mobility.

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Just like lunges you may do at the gym, this yoga lunge variation helps strengthen your lower body (glutes, quadriceps, and hamstrings), as well as your abdominal muscles.

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Another yoga lunge variation, this one also strengthens your lower body and abdominal muscles and can help boost your mood and energy.

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Balancing on one leg at a time, as you do in this pose, develops strength and stability in that leg, while improving your balance and practicing your mind-body connection.

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Keep a wall nearby in case you lose balance in this pose, which can be challenging. Standing figure 4 (a.k.a. single-leg chair) turns up the level of difficulty for one-legged mountain, making your standing leg stronger and stretching the hips and glutes of your raised leg.

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As the last single-leg pose in this series, tree pose also improves balance, stability, and focus, while gently opening the hips and stretching the inner thighs.

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Build Lower-Body Strength and Find Your Balance With These 6 Yoga Poses - Well+Good